Shoshone Indian Wedding Flowers

The older Shoshone Indians, who were also called the “Nation of the Snake”, were a tribe of nomads who roamed most of the western side of the U.S.A. living a simple off the land, life and using the nature around them for their every need. Since they weren’t a stably located tribe, they did not hold many possessions until the late eighteen hundreds when people started to be separated into rich and poor mainly due to the horse trade.

In the tradition of most other Indian tribes, this group had a spiritual leader called a witch doctor as it was thought he holds magic skills in healing the mind and the body of the tribe’s men and women. The Shoshone Indians held a religion called Sutteeism, which is basically a belief in self-sacrifice.



This tribe’s way of life was that of a gleeful group who wore clothes with poorly matched ornaments and who enjoyed mocking. Their nomadic way of life enabled them to carry on with their personal lives in connection with the nature around them and everything Mother Nature offered them. All these elements they drew from nature received names by which they tried to gain a higher understanding, which was ultimately enabled by the witch doctor, when all else failed.

Shoshone Indians held weddings where they used the famous Shoshone Indian wedding flowers, holding ceremonies under the clear sky and uttering their vows in poems dedicated by the two lovebirds to each other. These poems were mostly promises of devotion, everlasting love and respect for tradition. Elements seen in nature, including the white twilight star, the moon and the sky were used in metaphors meant to depict the love the bride and groom had for each other, linking the feelings with the elements present around them and thus universalizing their emotions.

The link formed between the two lovers in the wedding ceremony was celebrated and praised through the use of symbolic decorations applied to clothing, along with traditional Shoshone Indian wedding flowers, which were a sum of many flower types, and each of the flower types represented a symbol for the now wedding couple. The Shoshone Indian wedding flowers were always wild, since the tribe did not cultivate anything. Combinations included roses that stood for love, freesias that represented spiritual accomplishment, blooms of Peruvian lilies which stood for enthusiasm, sunflowers that represented adoration, iris which was the symbol for faith and wisdom, lilac which stood for virginal love and most importantly gardenias, which represented their traditional joy and glee.



Also, along with these traditional flowers, the wedding couple wore decorative costumes that were riddled with elements meant to depict their craft, habits and spiritual needs and demands. In this respect, a crown of eagle feathers varying in size and worn on the head, or a necklace of eagle feathers, worn by both of the lovebirds depicted the human spirit’s strength that flies towards the sky in search of wisdom and freedom.